Pondering over our tribulations

A Wish, a Prayer

Whether you are a believer, an agnostic or an atheist, what prayer would you compose to share your soul?

Wishes are things that come naturally to humans. We are creatures that feel, and long for comforts in such great ways that span the spectrums of morality, spirituality, and justice. Since the earliest phase of life, the infant child, fascinated with the world, begins to learn from it and name it. Once knowledge manifests, the child begins becoming “human” and begins to express the amazing creativity of our species and our imaginations in a private world of longing.

We wish for everything. And all our wishes are prayers to what we believe in. From the beginning of life, to the very end, our ceaseless longing expresses itself from the momentary to the profound wishes we make. From the longing for good life, love, peace, and wisdom, we long for revenge, harm, and hollow riches, making every wishing human an actor in the chain of causality that results in the good, the bad, and the ugly that we witness in the world. Like fire, human intelligence is potent in many ways. From the uncontrollable ferocity of wildfire that consumes everything in its path to the hearth that warms and protects, the degrees in which the flame manifests resembles the ranges that human intelligence can demonstrate itself. We hide in us the capacity for tremendous good, love, and knowledge, but the greed and power of a mistaken few has cast invisible bonds that cloud judgment for the innocent, in other words, the great majority of us.

It is the love, the care, and meaning we share with our family, friends, and community that make life worth living amidst the bills, the work, the wars, and the atrocities. If we lived in a world of mutual support, care, and empathy instead of the world of competition, differences, and indifference we have inherited, we would wish for far less things than we are used to and could live better than we could ever wish for.

How can this wish for a better world, the silent dream of countless dreamers, come to be? I believe that people have been counting on God for thousands of years to do what we are ultimately responsible for. In a society of nurture, love, care, and unity, people can personify the divine qualities we imagine in heavenly beings and live to be humble, wise, and powerful creatures. But as Confucius say: society begins from the individual. And it is ultimately the innate power that we have within ourselves that, when open to empathy and curiosity, becomes the power to change the world.

I’ve been hoping for some time now that humans would change their understanding of intelligence to include and give more weight to our capacities to mutually love, care, and learn. But I found out that happened only when I became the virtues I wished for, and saw what Ghandi’s timeless reflection, be the change you want to see in the world, really meant. So, I pray that all humans would one day see their infinite power of love and wisdom within us, and change their world by changing themselves.